In multi-modality tomographic systems, two or more different sensing modalities are used to locate or measure different constituents in the object space. In the PET-CT system, the PET creates images of high metabolic activity in the body, rather than creating images of surrounding anatomy. CT scans allow doctors to see the internal structures within the human body. Before having a PET-CT scan, the patient receives a dose of a radiopharmaceutical. The pharmaceutical is carried through the blood and concentrates in a particular organ or region and causes radiation to be emitted from the blood and this organ or region. During the scan, tracings of the emitted radiation are detected by the system creating an image of the distribution of the radiopharmaceutical in the patient. The image can show the circulatory system and/or the relative absorption of the radiopharmaceutical in various regions or organs. Integration of the anatomical data from the CT scan with the metabolic data from the PET scan in the PET-CT image gives physicians visual information to determine if disease is present, the location and extent of disease, and track how rapidly it is spreading. The PET-CT system is particularly helpful in difficult-to-treat regions (e.g. head and neck area, mediastinum, postsurgical abdomen) and localization of the treatment area for the patients receiving radiation therapy or chemotherapy.
As each medical imaging modality may provide complementary information on the imaged subject, it is desirable to combine all available information for review. There is a growing demand for a medical imaging review system to be able to handle multiple patients and multiple modalities over a temporally spaced series of imaging sessions. However, the current approach for viewing of the multiple patients is to load patients one at a time, which is cumbersome from a workflow standard point of view and also renders patient comparison difficult if not impossible.
Another problem arises in handling multiplicity of patients and modalities. One problem, for example, is the registration of images from multiple modalities or the same modality over multiple imaging sessions. Current methods allow handling of only few images with the assumption that the first volumetric image is fixed. Another problem is in providing support when conflicting requirements due to different needs exist. One approach is to provide customizable display protocols. However, the customizable display protocols make a tightly integrated viewing environment difficult to define and implement.
A challenge presented by multi-modality image viewing is the virtually endless possible display combinations for different image views and imaging modalities. These display combinations often include, accommodate, or otherwise share display space with data display areas. A collection and arrangement of image and data display areas is referred to as a layout.
Different physicians often have different preferred views for a given set of data. For example, one physician may prefer a single large image view while another physician may prefer a composite of smaller image views. Also, a particular physician may have different preferred views across different sets of data.
While a large number of predefined layouts could be provided in an effort to offer a layout matching each user's varied preferences, such an approach could substantially increase load time, as well as increase the difficulty in managing the layouts. Also, it is still possible that none of the provided layouts would correspond to the user's desired preferences.
Another approach is to provide the user with a layout editor. A layout editor is a utility that allows a layout to be created and/or an existing layout to be modified. Conventional layout editors generally work off-line (i.e., external to the image viewing application), whereby a user can load a layout and modify its attributes with or without graphical support. A limitation of conventional layout editors is that they do not provide direct feedback to the user as the user makes changes to a layout. That is, the viewing program must be left to access an editing program; the editing program used to make changes to the layout; and then the viewing program accessed again to observe the changes made to the layout. As a result, depending on the complexity of the layout, several iterations of the layout editing process may be necessary before the desired results are achieved. Thus, the editing time is often long and the learning curve is often steep with these off-line layout editors. Furthermore, extra time and/or resources are used to load data to verify the correctness of a layout design.
The present application provides new and improved systems and methods which also may address one or more of the above-referenced problems, challenges, limitations, and/or issues.